EDITORS NOTE: This is one of my favorite chapters but be prepared with the Kleenex!

CHAPTER 28

Standing in the waiting area of JFK, John looked around at the group who had come to see them off. Sameen was watching everybody...EVERYBODY. She still saw danger everywhere. But in her defense, she was usually right. Lionel was his usual gregarious self. He could make friends with a stick. Zoe was looking her usual sophisticated self, impeccably dressed and perfectly turned out. Iris was by his side, talking to Zoe. Their friendship had continued to bring them closer.

Sameen stepped to the side and motioned for John to join her. Walking a little bit away, Sameen stopped and grabbed John by the arm.

"Look, I didn't want to say anything in front of anybody else. But I gotta ask you a question." she said quietly. Looking around, making sure nobody was within earshot she continued, "What's up with this cane? How long are you going to need that thing? And your arm, you're still doing everything with your left hand. Does your right hand still not 'work right'?"

John took half a step back and looked at Sameen. "Yes, I still need this cane,l Sameen. I need it to walk." shaking his head he asked, "What's wrong? What's bothering you? What are you worried about?"

"I'm not…..worried Nothing's wrong." she was quick to answer. Frowning, she thought for a moment, "Oh hell, yes I am worried! I was expecting you to be back, now that you're….you know….BACK. But you can't work in the field can you? Can you even hold a gun?" the words tumbled out of her mouth. It was obvious to John that this had been weighing on her for a while.

"I'm not fit for the field, no. My stamina is almost non-existent. I can't hold a gun in my right hand for any length of time, much less aim and actually hit what I'm aiming for. My hand shakes like I'm 90 years old." John replied, clearly exasperated with his lack of quick progress.

"Sameen, I want to come back. I want to continue what we started. But I am different. At least for the moment, I'm different. I'm working hard at getting back to my old self but I have to be honest. I doubt I will ever be back the way I was." Shaking his head, it hurt to finally put that into words.

Looking at Sameen he reached out with his right hand and gently held her arm. "All I can do is promise to keep trying."

John, knowing Sameen very well, knew she wasn't really angry at him. But anger was an emotion that she could handle. Worry was not.

"Keep working with Lionel. You make a great team. I'll be as close as a phone if you need me. And Logan is literally only a phone call away too." John took on his normal, calm, in control persona and that seemed to settle Sameen down. Looking up at him she gave him a smirky smile and punched him in the shoulder. Thank goodness it was his good shoulder. John felt pleased with himself that he had said the right thing at the right time. He didn't want to leave things in NYC in disarray while he was going to what felt like the most important meeting of his life.

Looking over at Iris, he smiled. Everything in his life had led up to this moment. And it felt so right.

After lots of hugs and promises to call, John and Iris boarded the plane. Zoe had purchased them first class tickets, which worked out very well because of the extra leg room. John had long legs and his left leg would be aching quite badly after this 14 hour flight to Rome. At least he'd be able to stretch both legs out.

The flight was not full and there were empty seats around them. John appreciated the privacy they had. Being out in public with strangers and not looking at everyone as a possible Samaritan agent was still something he was getting used to again. He'd made a couple of more 'field trips' with Mrs. Mallard. They had explored parts of NYC while pushing him in the wheelchair. The wheelchair provided him with the 'space' that he felt he need on the crowded NYC sidewalks. People tended to give him more room to maneuver. Now that he only used a cane, people weren't quite so careful around him. He had almost become claustrophobic with the crush of people in the boarding area of the plane.

Buckling up, he was reminded of one of the last plane trips he had taken. When he had tried to 'quit his job' over the loss of Joss Carter. The memory of her made him sad. Iris reached over and placed her hand in his, saying nothing. She had seen the sadness in his face and comforted him with just a touch.

Within the first hour into the flight they both had a drink and relaxed. They were content to be together, shoulders touching and lost in their own thoughts.

Looking straight ahead John began to talk. "I've told you a little bit about my family, but really not all that much. But I've had time to think a lot lately and I realized what you have been telling me all this time; my past is what has made me who and what I am today. I think I'm ready to tell you more about my family.


"You already know about my dad. He died when I was 10 years old. Just 2 months after being discharged." Reese paused as he remembered...

"He survived 4 tours in Vietnam. But he came home and got blown up in an explosion in the factory where he was working. He'd lucked into this job. Lots of vets had trouble getting jobs when they got home. But he happened to be in the right place at the right time and this job opened up".

"My mom was so happy to have him home. He'd been deployed most of my life. My clearest memory is of it being just the three of us, me, my mom and my older sister Sophia. When Dad came back, it was almost like having a stranger move in with us. Mom had done her best to make sure I "knew" my dad. She talked a lot about him. She once told me that she couldn't remember NOT knowing him. They had been together forever. I think she told me they met in 1st grade. He was the only one for her. Neither of them had ever even had another relationship. Mom said they both fell in love at first sight. It must have been true because she never looked at another man and he never looked at another woman. They were faithful to each other even though they were apart so much."

"My dad had a hard time when he came home from Vietnam. He came home a changed man. The world he came back to was not the world he left. The horror he left behind in Vietnam visited him at night in the form of nightmares. The reception he got at the airport stunned him. We were there to welcome him home but there had been demonstrators with signs screaming at him and the other soldiers that had come home. It was a different world than when he'd enlisted. The protests against Vietnam were everywhere. We were used to the constant barrage of protesters so we didn't realize, at first, how bad it would appear to him. Hearing people scream such hatred about our country and the people, like him, who'd just come back from HELL but were treated so badly, almost broke him. But being home with us, especially with Mom, was enough to offset all that, I think. I was really too young to notice it much but Sophia did,"

"She was nine years older than me and I remember when she and my mom would argue about the war. Mom was always there to support my dad but Sophia was hanging around a group that was becoming more and more active in the anti-war movement. Mom begged her to keep those activities away from my dad when he got home. And I'll have to give it to Sophia, she did try. But my dad knew. I can remember the silence at the dinner table with the TV news in the background. Our family life was...strained to say the least. But Mom was the glue that held us all together. Seeing how happy she was to have Dad home was everything to both of us".

Once again, Reese fell silent, his mind reliving his past. It did seem to be easier to think about his family. It was still painful, yes, but he felt he could deal with it. Glancing up, he saw Iris looking out the window. She had wanted to give him that moment of privacy, without her watching him. She must have felt his gaze. She turned toward him and smiled and he smiled back.

"There was an explosion in the factory where he worked. Eight people were killed. 22 survived. My dad was one of the ones killed. Not killed by the explosion, he was killed going back into the building that was in flames and pulling the injured out. He was one of the few who kept his head during the chaos that followed the explosion. He saved four of those twenty-two people before the fire got him".

"Oh John, I'm so sorry." She watched the pain pass over and through him.

Once again, the inward journey took over and he fell silent. Iris waited again for him to continue. This time she did watch him as he struggled to deal with the memory, it obviously still had a hold of him.

"I can still hear the people talking at the funeral. Talking about how brave he was. That he was a hero." He whispered.

"But I also remember them talking about my mother. They felt sorry for her. They pitied her. All those years waiting for him to come home and then to lose him in less than a year." He looked up and met Iris's gaze. There were tears in his eyes. "I will never forget how my mother looked when they lowered his casket into the ground. I was afraid she was going to jump in after him." Shaking his head side to side. "I held her hand as tight as I could to make sure she didn't jump, that she stayed with me."

"That must have been awful for her. All those years of waiting for him, worrying about him in harm's way only to lose him here."

"She was never the same after that. She sort of disconnected from life. She went through the motions of taking care of me and my sister. But her heart wasn't in it. She seldom spoke except when she was spoken to directly. She cooked for us and made sure we went to school but the house started to show her lack of care. She just seemed like there was no longer a reason to live. I remember trying to get her to eat more. My sister tried to take on some of the house keeping duties but she was having her own issues. She and my dad had come to an uneasy truce with her protesting activities.. Now that he was gone, she was ready to be gone too. The group she was hanging around had a bigger influence on her than my mother had at that point. She moved out about two months after Dad died. And that became just another blow to my mother. It was hard on her but she couldn't seem to rouse herself enough out of her mourning to do much about it. Slowly but surely, my mother faded away. So she really did die of a broken heart." John paused and one tear made its way down his cheek.

Iris's heart ached for the pain of that little 10 year old boy. Even now, she could tell from the pain he still carried, that he had not spoken of that time with anyone before.

"There wasn't much I could do for my mother. I was ten years old but I tried to be the 'man of the house' but I knew I was not being that successful. I would do anything to get my mother to smile, to try and give her even a moment of happiness. But she just got sadder and sadder, weaker and weaker. She caught pneumonia bad that winter and died." Again John paused for a minute, remembering his mother's smile and then remembering her sadness over the loss of his dad.

Iris could see what that admission had cost John. He was giving voice to the grief of a little boy who had lost both his parents.

"Because I was only ten years old I had to go live with my sister. Not the best solution but it was the only one available. Turns out my sister lived in a commune. Not really a place the son of an ex-soldier would want to call home."

"I lived with them for almost seven years. I stayed in school and tried to keep my nose clean. I wanted my parents to be proud of me. But I'd come home everyday to people smoking pot and doing drugs. I took up some basketball in school mainly just to keep from going home. Also because it was the cheapest sport I could play. All I needed was to pay for was my shoes and a second hand ball. Things were not good at home. I didn't like the guy my sister was with and he didn't like having me there. I hated coming home every day."

"I got beat up one time at school for standing up for vets like my dad. It turned out to be the only time I ever got beat up. I didn't like being on the losing end and not being able to protect myself. That was when I got into martial arts. I was surprisingly good at it. I got my self-confidence back and gained the discipline I'd been looking for and didn't even know it. I was a fast learner. Eventually I got a name for myself for taking care of bullies after I went after and got the guy who'd beaten me up two years before. By then, I was looking for others who were like I'd used to be, those unable to protect themselves and were being bullied just for being themselves. So now you know why there were no bullies in my school." John looked up and smiled sheepishly at Iris, remembering their walking therapy session that had ended up as a shoot out. Even then, she'd been so perceptive and pegged him as someone with a 'hero complex'.

"What happened to Sophia?"

A shadow came over Reese's face. This was another obviously unpleasant and painful memory for him. But Iris knew he needed to face it. To put what happened into words.

"I came home one day from basketball practice and walked into the house and found him beating my sister. She was on the floor, covering her face and he was kicking her." John paused as the memory of that moment filled him once again with rage. The look on his face, as it played over again in his mind's eye, was something that Iris hoped to never see again. There was death in that stare.

"They didn't even know I was home. Sophia was trying to crawl away from him and he'd dragged her back by her hair. She scratched him in the face and he let her go for a moment. She was finally able to stand up but when she did, he punched her in the face." Once again the moment was playing in his head. "She crumpled like she had no bones in her body. He stood over her screaming and kicking her over and over while she just lay there."

"I was finally able to move and I tackled him to get him away from her. I tried to go back and check on her because she was not moving at all. He grabbed me and screamed at me to mind my own business. I remember yelling at him "She IS my business. She's my sister!"

"I don't remember much after that. I do remember beating the crap out of him. He was no match for me. I was younger and I knew how to fight. He was hopped up drugs so his movements were sluggish. I almost beat him to death. Probably the only reason I didn't was because I remembered Sophia. She still hadn't moved."

"I left him on the floor and went to Sophia. She was bleeding badly. I couldn't wake her up. I called the operator for an ambulance. The police came at the same time as the ambulance. Neighbors had heard what was going on."

"It was like watching a bad movie. They loaded Sophia up and took her to the hospital. I can still see their faces. They were shaking their heads, her injuries were so severe."

"The police had arrived and ended up calling another ambulance for him. I'd beaten him that badly. And I felt no remorse except for the fact he was still breathing"

"I was taken to the hospital by the police to have my injuries treated. I was told I was under arrest for assault."

"The police were familiar with him and his habit of beating my sister. They had been called to house more than a few times. How she kept that a secret from me I don't know. Except that maybe I was working so hard to have a life away from them that I deliberately didn't notice. Either way, they pretty much knew what had happened before even talking to me."

Tears suddenly flowed down his cheeks as the next memory took a hold of him.

"Sophia died that night. Her injuries were too severe. She bled to death internally before I even got to see her. Maybe she'd still be alive if I'd called for the ambulance sooner, if she'd gotten to the hospital faster. I was so filled with rage and wanting to hurt him like he hurt her...I took too long...I was too late to save her. I knew she was being verbally abused but I didn't try to get her to leave him. It was my fault she died..."

Iris let his emotions play out. They had been bottled up for over twenty years. He needed this. So much of what he'd told her made her truly understand the man she knew today. She stayed quiet as she watched him warring within himself over the pain and frustration of not being able to change the past. She reached for a hand that he had clenched into a fist. Sliding her hand into his, he relaxed enough so that their fingers intertwined.

Leaning back with his eyes closed, John slowly brought himself back to the present and more in under control. Wiping the tears from his cheeks, he made a deep sigh. Opening his eyes, he looked over at Iris. A different man looked out of those eyes. The shadows were still there, but not as deep.

"Since the police were familiar with him and his penchant for beating up my sister, they put in a good word with the judge when I went to court for the assault charges. But right or wrong, I still beat a man half to death...even if he did deserve it...and that's against the law. It turned out that the judge had been a friend of my father. They'd served in Vietnam together. He knew what had happened to my dad. He knew my mother and how she'd died. Because of that connection I was lucky. I was given a choice. I could go to jail for ten years or I could enlist in the military.

Remembering all that came after that one decision, he fell silent. Pressing his lips together, he tried to keep himself in the present. His 'sensitivities', as Harold had once called them, were slowly becoming bearable. He turned his head and looked out the window of the plane. Squeezing Iris's hand, he lifted it and gently kissed the back of it.